


> Thistle: Break, Don't Bend

by Princeliest



Series: Fantroll Shenanigans [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Break Up, Casteism | Hemophobia (Homestuck), M/M, POV Second Person, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princeliest/pseuds/Princeliest
Summary: Lee knows that going to visit Thistle after nearly getting his face plastered across social media under the headline 'Seadweller heir caught quadrant-smearing with mysterious moirail' is a long-shot at best, but he really does need some form of closure. Unfortunately for him, it all goes just about as well as he thought it would.Alt. Title: > Lee: Get dumped.
Relationships: Lionel Prince/Thistle Reveen
Series: Fantroll Shenanigans [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969234
Kudos: 2





	> Thistle: Break, Don't Bend

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhh. I'm back at it with my fantroll stuff, and I refuse to have shame. I was editing chapter two of _:X_ and ended up poking through some of my old drabbles. I really miss writing Lee, the POV character of this, so I decided to post the oneshot I have with him. I'm pretty proud of it even still (it's a year old), but it's so niche that I'll be quite surprised if anyone reads this!
> 
>  **Background Information:** Lee is a wealthy seadweller adopted away from his lusus by his ancestor (Lionel Prince I), and subsequently disowned for when he was discovered kissing his moirail Thistle in a decidedly flushed manner. Formerly a fashion model and a bit of a party animal, this was the last, embarrassing straw on top of a lifetime of being mostly useless to his military career-oriented ancestor. He's now living with a friend and trying to unlearn a lifetime of getting emotionally taken advantage of, which is sort of hard when he's also spiraling further into teenage alcoholism.

You find Thistle on the rocky path that winds around the side of his hivestem and leads to the small community garden he grows all his vegetables in.

You think, pretty much immediately, that you shouldn’t have come. This would have been a better thought to have had the last three times you showed up on his step, and he didn’t answer his bell, and - well, now you look sort of like a stalker, and he looks like an antlerbeast caught in headlights. He’s clutching a watering can, and you wonder if he’s been keeping out of the garden just to avoid you.

“Hey,” you mumble lamely, and drop your hand from where you’d raised it to waggle your fingers in a wave. “Uh, I know this isn’t… I mean, I just thought, we haven’t talked in ages.”

Thistle doesn’t say anything, and you watch the light breeze ruffle his hair. It’s long, bleached white, and pin-straight. The total opposite of yours, and you always liked winding it round your fingers and playing with it.

You swallow, and rock back on your heels. You know. You know he would’ve answered your texts, or his door at least, if he wanted to talk to you. It’s just…

“Not since - that night, I mean,” you say, and you are going to say ‘not since I got kicked out,’ but you’re not trying to make Thistle feel guilty, here. It’s not his fault. It’s never been his fault. You’re the one that got him in the papers - and, sure, maybe it wasn’t his face, but it was his clothes, his hair, his horns. His hair was gold last time you saw it, metallic and shimmering.

“And I was just wondering,” you go on, because that was the second long, awkward pause you’ve inflicted on this conversation. “About what… I mean, if we were still friends.”

Thistle finally moves, and it’s to lean down and set his watering can on the ground. He presses his hands to his face, shoulders shaking - and you think you’ve made him cry for a second, until he barks a laugh and you think you’ve made him go nutters, instead.

“What the fuck, Lee?” he half-yells into his hands, still blocking himself from looking at you. “Are we still friends? After - I was in that photo, too, you know, and Lionel fucking Prince isn’t stupid, he knows - yeah, Lee, sure, we can still be friends, because apparently why the hell not, long’s you say sorry nice enough - just get on your knees and kiss my boots, or something.”

His shoulders are still trembling, and he makes some sort of queer keening noise that dissolves into mildly hysterical laughter, and - you try to laugh, too, but you only manage to wrestle about half your face into some mangled attempt at a smile. Thistle shudders.

You lean over and get on your knees.

You can tell the exact moment Thistle finishes dragging his hands down his face, because he sputters loudly and then something yanks sharply up at your shoulders. You don’t even have time to get the knees of your pants wet on the rocky pavement before he jerks you roughly to your feet.

“What,” Thistle presses his thumbclaws into the insides of your wrists, “The hell are you doing, Lee?”

You sag in his hold, relieved he’s back to his old self. He’s always liked yanking you around - it feels good for a warmblood like him, you think, cold flesh and wrists thin enough for him to wrap his whole hand around. Exotic, maybe. You never pull away, really, and you like that he likes tugging you around. You like that you can be what he wants.

It doesn’t make you feel good this time. You can’t meet his eyes. You can’t even think, really, because you were about to - you were about to - Thistle stopped you, Thistle was clearly, indisputably, obviously not being serious, and you’re so fucking mortified that you think you might just die.

You shake your head, mute, and run your tongue over where your lip’s cracked. You haven’t been drinking enough water. Or maybe just drinking too much alcohol. Regardless, you’re too sober to figure out how to navigate the maze that is this conversation - everything you try results in you running into the proverbial thistles.

Thistle’s claws are hot pricks of pain at your wrists, and you desperately don’t want him to let go.

Thistle shoves you back anyways, and you knock into the decorative brick wall of his hivestem’s garden behind you. Your hand goes to wrap around your opposite wrist, but all your cold skin does is chase away the warmth of Thistle’s.

“This,” he says, and you think he sounds angry. He flings his arms out to gesture at… all of you, really, and it looks more like he’s slapping some invisible assailant. “This is why I can’t do this, Lee. Just - just stop looking at me like that.”

“Like I’m upset you’re dumping me?” you ask, because you can’t help it, and you don’t mean for it to bite. Whenever you bite at Thistle, it just comes back around to bite you.

Case in point: “Like I’m the last troll on this planet,” he blurts, “And I’ve left you at the altar, or something.”

He makes a small jerk of a motion towards you, barely a half-step, and he must see how you lean in at that, because the gesture stops short, aborted.

“We’re not handfasted, Lee,” he says, more softly, and you must still be looking at him like he doesn’t want you to, because the little bit of skin between his brows furrows, right where he has two asymmetrical freckles that he always rubs at when he’s thinking. “We’re not even really quadranted, are we? You just - I do love you, Lee, but I can’t love you in a way that fits and I can’t keep worrying about how - how messed up it is that you think licking someone’s goddamn boots is okay if you just like them enough, if I’m also thinking about kissing you. I just can’t.”

“You can kiss me all you like, darling - and do the other thing, too, if it strikes your fancy,” you offer, instead of addressing the rest of the issue. You’re already trying not to think about that. It does make your smile come out a little sickly, though.

“No,” Thistle murmurs, and the low lilt sends a shivery chill pricking its way down your spine. “I really can’t. You’re too much, Lee. I can’t do it all myself. You let people get away with too much.”

This time, when he steps into your space, your back presses to cool brick and you squeeze your eyes shut. You press your palms to the red stone, and it’s barely enough to ground you at all.

Something dry and warm brushes against your bottom lip, and when you peer out from under your lashes, Thistle has his thumb up to your mouth. You kind of want to turn your face to kiss his palm, or maybe get cheeky and just nip his finger. Sucking it into your mouth is probably not tonally appropriate. You don’t do any of those things, though, because you’re just looking at his face and you can’t breathe. Last troll on the planet? He looks like he’s burying you.

“I don’t know how to be less,” you whisper against his hand, barely a breath, and - you want to bite your lip, to worry a fang at the little cut he’s got his thumb pressed against, but you’re too scared to move.

Thistle’s shoulders hunch even further. “I know,” he tells you, and all you can think is that it hardly seems fair, then. “Do you even remember where you got this?”

It takes you a second to realize that referring to your lip, close as he is, because you sort of feel like he’s taken all your warmth and he’s this close to leaving and keeping it forever. Then it takes you another second to figure out how to answer without doing something upsetting. He’s still touching you.

“M’not drinking ‘nough water,” you mumble, shrugging carefully so as not to make him move. “S’just a split.”

Thistle shakes his head ‘no,’ and drops his hand. You immediately pull your bottom lip into your mouth, biting over it defensively as your arms cross over your stomach.

“No, Lee,” he says, and you hate how he’s saying your name. It’s not how you say his, not how you call him darling. He says your name the same way other people talk to their lusi after they’ve gone and shit on the carpet, but they know that dumb animals can’t help what they are and they just need to be patient.

“You were being a little shit because you thought it was cute, and I got properly annoyed and you let me bite you,” he says, “Like we’re pitch, even though we were kissing like we’re flush, even though-” And here your cheeks are flushing hot again, and you finally find where your warmth is and all you want is for it to go back, because it’s pooling in the corners of your eyes- “Even _though_ ,” he goes on, “We’re supposed to be _pale_.”

“You love me,” you tell him, and your voice cracks in your throat. “What’s it matter what color it all is?”

Thistle makes some inarticulate noise of frustration, and some sort of gesture. You don’t see it, on account of how blurry everything’s gotten through the tears, and you’ve gone and returned to staring at the ground. At his stupid boots.

“You think I don’t feel terrible?” he asks, and if he wasn’t so quiet it would practically be a wail. “For Empress’s sake, Lee, I’m not trying to make you cry, here, I just…”

“I can’t s-stop,” you inform him, and now that you’ve both acknowledged it, your shoulders start shaking in earnest. You press back into the wall, and shove the heels of your hands against your cheeks as if it’ll keep the tears in. “Would if I - if I could, d-da-arl-.”

You don’t bother trying to finish the word, and bend over in two, hiding your face in your hands. You can’t stop, you can’t, you wish you could just stop doing all of these things, stop running into red flags and conversational hedge walls or whatever metaphor you were trying to make earlier, stop being too much. You’re always too much, or not enough, and for as long as you remember you’ve been trying to be less and more and just get people to like you every once in a while. And now you’ve got someone that does like you, and he’s leaving you anyways, and of course you can’t stop yourself fucking crying about it.

Gravel crunches as Thistle steps forward, and he presses a hand to your back, rubbing slowly down your spine.

He stays there for as long as it takes for your tears to run out, and you don’t quite figure out if it’s okay to hug him back. You’re not sure you have the right to. When you finally manage to bring yourself to be still, his hand slides off your back, and you watch his boots as he leaves.


End file.
